With regard to the comment that commerical computer systems have more money to spend, I beg to differ. Old hardware and outdated software are a constant problem due to lack of funds. All management must work within its budget or ultimately the organization will go away. Setting priorities within budgetary constraints is where I believe SETI management must improve. Matt and the other "workers" do a reasonable job considering their limits of hardware.

Again, is there anything the clients can do to help improve system operation and reliability besides throwing money? David Moritz

As for SETI, there are really limited scope for management improvement when there's only like 3 person in the team. The project is run on a tight shoestring budget - unlike IT departments in the the commercial world - given the magnitude of the task handled by the team so far - would likely have ended with probably a brigade size organisation with an overall director, an OS director, UHD director, multiple project managers, drones of coordinators and still one "Herbert" to do the work.

Can somebody please direct me to all these commercial development projects with bags of money and resources? In my 35 years of technology development, every project I've ever worked on needed more money, more time and more staff. In every case, the customer got what they paid for - no more or no less. From what I see, SETI and BOINC are not very different from this.

World Community Grid (funded by IBM) always seems to function. They do things like feed the world and cure deseases research. ET believers are often seen to be on the fringe and don't always get the priority.

"Can somebody please direct me to all these commercial development projects with bags of money and resources"

Can somebody please direct me to all these commercial development projects with bags of money and resources? In my 35 years of technology development, every project I've ever worked on needed more money, more time and more staff. In every case, the customer got what they paid for - no more or no less. From what I see, SETI and BOINC are not very different from this.

I suppose it is different from the IT dept in a technology company. Mine have a plush IT campus site in Austria, and an annual budget bigger than those of production. Projects run forever, in house tools have admins in regional centre. A friend of mine actually quitted her job because it is too boring taking care of only one application that no one uses (or likes anyway). Customised application lives on because all the users only dares to feedback to the management that they are "brilliant" while in effect they manipulate the data in Excel and post it back on the app for "political reason".

Before I worked here I always wondered why none of the big corporations would support any distributed computing initiative (even if electricity cost are not that high due to high subsidies in tax free zones) - any single thing are prohibitively expensive budgetwise and free alternatives, e.g. Firefox, banned outright.

Anyway it is a blessing that SETI have a dedicated bunch of developers on site supported by a global network of sometimes overzealous enthusiasts. For a commercial setup for something similar would be prohibitively expensive.

Once again it appears that AP has caused a weekend outage for most SETI contributors. If the purpose of SETI@Home is to process information, it would seem that AP needs to go back to beta testing until it is ready for prime time and does not stop overall system processing.

Actually, on this particular occasion, the astropulse application is entirely blameless for the network congestion, and it doesn't need to go back to beta (at least, not for the reason you're suggesting - further development work and improvement is always a possibility).

The problem arises from the deployment of the new, fully-functional, AP application, and a well-intentioned attempt to reduce the associated bandwidth demand.

Contrary to my post at 22 Feb 2009 10:05:12 (#867990), it appears that Coral Cache has been running all the time: maybe now is the time to turn it off, Matt?

It appears that the "tiny subset of users [who] cannot download these new clients" have uncovered a flaw in BOINC's error handling mechanisms which has spectacularly backfired in Matt's face: instead of reducing the bandwidth demand, Coral Cache (and the endless - unsatisfied - demand for work by the tiny subset) has magnified the demand to the point where only the 'down the hill' bottleneck has prevented total meltdown.

Step 1: turn off Corel Cache, and let the bandwidth recover
Step 2: patch the BOINC problem which allows the endless repeat requests
Step 3: look again at the downhill bottleneck, because it's going to staurate with real data sooner or later (what with CUDA, Astropulse, Corei7, ATI/OpenGL, etc. etc.)

This is all rediculous.. Isn't it obvious by now that we have stumbled upon some real ET signals and the men in Black have showed up to blank the memories of the project people. Anyways...

This is the first time in quite a while that my quads have been idle. Seems strange when I hit crtl-alt-delete click on Performance and find my CPUs at 0% usage. I'm all weirded out over here. What ever will they do?

I wonder if the electrical company will call curious why my demand went down..

I am sure that they are doing their best with the limited resources at their disposal. Why not stop moaning and do another BOINC project while you are waiting.

Or why not do some maintenance on your computers. Clean the fans, take a cup of coffee, eat a few donuts, clean the fans, take a cup of coffee, eat a few donuts, clean the fans, take a cup of coffee, eat a few donuts, clean the fans, take a cup of coffee, eat a few donuts, clean the fans, take a cup of coffee, eat a few donuts, clean the fans

I am sure that they are doing their best with the limited resources at their disposal. Why not stop moaning and do another BOINC project while you are waiting.

Or why not do some maintenance on your computers. Clean the fans, take a cup of coffee, eat a few donuts, clean the fans, take a cup of coffee, eat a few donuts, clean the fans, take a cup of coffee, eat a few donuts, clean the fans, take a cup of coffee, eat a few donuts, clean the fans, take a cup of coffee, eat a few donuts, clean the fans

We dont get donut's easily here in switzerland and our air is that clean so we dont have to clean fans at all...

I used to get no WU for my 8800GTX, but last friday I started to crunch also on the GPU! Was it due to a new version whatever. The GPU crunches so fast, compared to the CPU, is it my fault to upload to fast and the mess is just a reaction of tousends of "old" 8800GTX waiting for there share of WU and crunch em ALL last friday?

If a rig is running out of work and idle.. the user would be confused that BOINC would not ask for new work.

If [CPUs *2] uploads are wainting BOINC don't ask for new work.

I read for around one year or something that a member leaved his home for one or two weeks because of holiday or work.. [can't remember ;-)] and he came back and saw his rig idle and was little angry that he paid for an idle pc electricity.
And he saw that BOINC would ask again in ~ xxx hours again for new work.
[he posted this here in the forum]

I took BOINC V6.4.5.
The first day I reached the 1,400 WU limit.
Four days no asking for new work.
At the 5. day he would like to have ~ 3,000,000 seconds of new work.
He ask one/two times and then not again.
I press 'update' and he don't ask for new work.

After some hours he ask again for ~ 3,000,000 seconds of new work.
Maybe one time.
I press 'update' no asking for new work.

I take BOINC V6.6.5 and immediately he want new work.
Every time I press 'update' he want more work.
Automatically he ask every one/two to ~ 6 hours only two times for new work, if he get 'no jobs available'.
This is well.
[If SETI@home would not send back: 'no jobs available' ;-)]

Soo.. O.K. .. enough for the moment.. ;-D
Hope the Berkeley guys will solve the current problem soon and I wish all members out there enough WUs for their PCs! :-)